Close to 100 sales this month!

[GolfHacker]

I'm really close to hitting the 100 sales mark for the first month ever! I'd love some help crossing that boundary, if anyone is looking for a fun game for their kids! Or yourself!

Edit: I'm also offering a special Halloween coupon this weekend! You can use this coupon code when you purchase Dirk Dashing, Rick Rocket, Fashion Cents, or any of the other games I have written: "HALLOWEEN09"

[CasualInsider]

I'll post your site some places... be sure to let us know what happens.

[jrjellybeans]

Congrats man!

Am I to assume that Fashion Cents is still your top seller?

Any quick advice on how to get that many sales for other indy studios

[Roman Budzowski]

Troy, congratulations I remember that the feeling is great when you achieve or even get close to that number of sales.

Any quick advice on how to get that many sales for other indy studios

Work hard on marketing side and don't give up.

cheers
Roman

[GolfHacker]

Congrats man!

Am I to assume that Fashion Cents is still your top seller?

Any quick advice on how to get that many sales for other indy studios

Yes, Fashion Cents is still my top seller overall. Dirk doesn't do too bad either. My other games sell well when they are first released or when I release an update, but FC sales are fairly steady year-after-year.

As for getting sales volume up... I'm no expert at this, and I had no experience marketing anything when I first started, so I've had to go through plenty of trial and error to figure out what works for me, what doesn't, and how I can get the most bang for my advertising dollars. So take anything I say here with a grain of salt. I know there are others here who have had different experiences and/or better success. For me, it took a lot of persistence and hard work. Until recently my games haven't been on any portals or other sites, so all of my sales prior to this year have been direct sales. It has taken me 6 years to grow my business to this point by going that route.

But I've done a few things this year that has helped increase my sales volume. First, I've started looking for other family-friendly games made by other developers and signing up for affiliate sales so I can add them to my site. This has probably been the biggest contributor to increasing my web site traffic and overall sales. I've found that I need to be regularly adding new content to my site in order to not only keep traffic but grow it - especially since I'm still only a part-time indie. I just can't crank out new games fast enough on my own. But regularly adding other games to my site that appeal to my target audience keeps visitors coming back.

Second, I did a sequel to Fashion Cents to try to capitalize on my existing customer base by giving them more of what I already know they like. I probably should have done this years ago, but hey - I'm a slow learner sometimes.

Third, I've been getting some of my games onto other sites (Mac Game Store, Reflexive, etc), and that has helped gain exposure for my company & games and bring more traffic to my site. I keep my newer games and certain other games exclusive to my site (like the Fashion Cents sequel), so when I do get visitors who found and/or purchased my games from other sites and came looking for me, they find new/similar games on my site that they can't find anywhere else.

I don't know if I can draw any reliable conclusions from this, since my sales volume is still well below what it needs to be for me to go full-time, but so far these strategies seem to be working for me. I've nearly doubled my sales volume this year.

Hope that helps you, for whatever it's worth.

[Uhfgood]

How do you actually increase traffic by providing others games? Is it because of an exchange of links or what?

I run Indie Flux a review site, I'm trying to figure out how to drive more traffic to it, and I will be adding a section (page) for affiliate links (a store of sorts), but I don't see anyone coming to my site for that (just if they do come they might buy some games and I might make some affiliate money).

I hope when I eventually get my game done Indie Flux will actually drive traffic to my game. It seems like a nice way to have "built in" traffic :-)

[GolfHacker]

How do you actually increase traffic by providing others games? Is it because of an exchange of links or what?

It's pretty simple, actually. Here was my original problem: it usually takes me anywhere from 6 months to a year or more to produce a game. When I finally release a new game, I get a sudden burst of traffic from press releases, game news/review sites, etc. But as the months following a release go by, my traffic would decline because there wasn't ever anything new on my site. So I would lose traffic. And when I did release a new game and would notify customers, the click-through rate on my e-mail notification was horrible - I guess most of them had already moved on to other things. So getting and keeping traffic was a big problem.

By regularly adding new content, visitors who like my site keep coming back. And they tend to tell their friends about the site, because they're frequently visiting it and it is still fresh in their minds.

[GolfHacker]

Well, the final tally is in, and I came up a couple of sales short of 100! Bummer! Oh well, maybe November will be the month I break 100...

[RinkuHero]

Well, the final tally is in, and I came up a couple of sales short of 100! Bummer! Oh well, maybe November will be the month I break 100...

if you really want to break 100, have a sale where you sell a game for like 1$ or 'choose your own price', you'll easily break 100 if you do that

[ragdollsoft]

If you don't mind a bit of unrequested suggestions, I would put a color gradient in the background of your site, an easy fix that would make your pages more exciting.

[GolfHacker]

You mean in place of the faint cream color around the perimeter of the page, or instead of the white interior?

[ragdollsoft]

I'm thinking the faint cream color on the back of the page, maybe darken it a bit towards the top. Not sure what colors you could put, maybe something like http://www.allcrunchy.com/Web_Stuff/...ype=sinusoidal

Not that I'm a master web designer :P just my 2 cents.

[Uhfgood]

Interesting about the traffic thing. I don't see that really working for just a review site, but like I said I will put up a page for affiliate sales, and eventually i'm going to email a newsletter monthly which should say what I've added during the month.

Thanks for the info.

[JGOware]

Ufghood - If you have the money, I would place some ads on other blogs, review sites, game sites, etc, etc. That would get some eye balls quickly.

GolfHacker - Thanks for sharing those numbers! I assumed you were already moving that amount and more each month, especially with the female demographic games. Just goes to show how hard it truly is to make a dent in the download market these days. BigFishGames didn't accept any of your games btw? I would think Fashion Cents would be right in their target demographic.

[Jack Norton]

Just goes to show how hard it truly is to make a dent in the download market these days. BigFishGames didn't accept any of your games btw? I would think Fashion Cents would be right in their target demographic.

judging from recent games it seems that the demographic shifted a bit into the CSI-fans genre:
http://www.bigfishgames.com/download...ion/index.html
(I never thought I would read the word "serial killer" in a casual game! )

[HDL]

Congratulations on your sales and sorry you didn't quite get the 100 mark.

As for the subject of serial killers in casual games. There's a certain casual game series out there that has serial killers, tackles girls being raised to go into child prostitution, rape, suicide, paedophilia, and some other very dark themes. The series is a very big seller on Big Fish Games and there's no warning on any of the games of the dark themes they have. Since it's a great seller, unlike Dangerous High Schoolgirls in Trouble, it's not actually been removed from the site. There's also at least one game out there based on a real serial killer.

[Indinera]

What's the name of the game?

[electronicStar]

Congratulations!
Did you profit steadily increase over time or is it some sort of crazy fluctuation thing?

[Maupin]

judging from recent games it seems that the demographic shifted a bit into the CSI-fans genre:
http://www.bigfishgames.com/download...ion/index.html
(I never thought I would read the word "serial killer" in a casual game! )

When that game popped up on Reflexive, I was a bit worried that it wasn't right for the Game Socks audience. So I played it to make sure it didn't go into what might be inappropriate territory. There's actually no violence whatsoever, the dialogue is extremely corny, and it's much more tame than most (if not all) CSI episodes. I didn't even feel as if I needed to put a special warning on the game description, like I did with Campfire Legends: The Hookman. And Trapped: The Abduction is actually selling quite well. I'm sure we'll see a Trapped: The Escape in six months...

Troy, congratulations on getting close to 100, anyway. Actually I had assumed like JGOware that you were already selling many more than 100 copies per month.

[Evil Dan]

Awesome! Good job!!

[Uhfgood]

If I didn't say congrats already, congrats, that's a pretty big accomplishment. I wasn't trying to hijack the thread, honest!

[GolfHacker]

Thanks everyone!

@electronicStar - It's been pretty steady growth, though there are always spikes and dips in the sales graph for whatever reason (new game release, slow month, or whatever).

@JGOWare and Maupin - I was hoping to have been doing > 100 sales per month by now, but I think the slow economy has been impacting my growth. That, and the 2 games I released this year (Rick Rocket and Fashion Cents Gents) haven't done nearly as well as I had hoped. I guess 2D space shooters don't sell all that well, but I was really surprised by Fashion Cents Gents - only about 5% of my previous FC customers purchased it, even with the discount I gave them. I was anticipating a much better response than that!

@JGOWare - BFG turned down Fashion Cents back in 2004, and then the Deluxe version again in 2007. In each case, their response was the same: "We do not feel that the game is the right fit for our current consumer base." Interestingly, their response to my Rick Rocket submission earlier this year added this: "As our customer audience is predominately female with the majority of players being over the age of 35, the most popular game genres on our site tend to be Hidden Object, Puzzle Adventure, Time-Management, and Sims/Strategy style games. Regarding 'Rick Rocket', the game would simply not resonate well with our audience..."

Funny, the Mac version of FC got to #22 on Reflexive's Top Sellers list for a couple of days. Oh well, their loss...

[wazoo]

wow...late to the party am I, but grats on the attempt to break 100 man!

[Jack Norton]

Funny, the Mac version of FC got to #22 on Reflexive's Top Sellers list for a couple of days. Oh well, their loss...

Heh at least you got a reply from BFG and are on Reflexive I never got a reply from anybody except AT.